


Luciel

by waterfoul



Series: Luciel [1]
Category: Pillars of Eternity
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Or something close to that, Pre-Relationship, Slavery mention, Tasteful gay yearning, but it's only a minor part of it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-26
Updated: 2020-09-26
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:27:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26657383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waterfoul/pseuds/waterfoul
Summary: Luciel is not a knight.
Relationships: Aloth Corfiser/The Watcher
Series: Luciel [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1945060
Comments: 4
Kudos: 12





	Luciel

**Author's Note:**

> i have nothing to say other than :? i did not proofread my work im so sorry to every english teacher ive had.  
> also i haven't written fanfiction since I was 12 or 13 so this'll be an interesting ride.  
> also im so sorry about the tense of this i have no idea what was happening there.

Luciel is no knight. 

It doesn’t take much for him to know he’d never be close to one. The scars on his body remind him of that; hands calloused by labor remind him of that. 

He is not a knight, he is an omen. A foul omen. 

The skin of this throat, covered snugly by his mother’s old scarf, protects his voice. _“You’ll have no defense in this world. They’ll take everything from you,”_ she told him, wrapping it around his neck _“but don’t let them take your voice.”_ Easy, he had thought, still a young boy. How can one even take a voice? But he had been foolish, _foolish,_ to think so. 

He bit back when they brought their hands too close in any way he could, with his canines sharp and his tongue a weapon of its own. It didn’t always work, how could it? Some are simply louder than he. 

_He will bring us bad fortune,_ his father says, pointing an accusing finger at him. _Not a week after his birth, that old crone died._

 _That woman was well beyond her years. It was her time._ his mother says. _He is our son._

 _Not a knight. Not a knight. Not a knight._ Not a knight, even if his mother holds him near, hiding her fear and wavering voice in kisses pressed to his hair, and tells him stories of a brave knight with a scarred face who wore a helmet to hide his shame. He had been cursed by an evil king, who was the most handsome in the land, but had the ugliest heart. Luciel can wear no helmet, not one to cover the growths over his face or hide his bruise colored skin.

In her story, the knight met a beautiful woman and they fell in love, but he never showed his face. _How could you love someone and never see their face?_ he wondered. He wonders. But then his mother speaks of inner beauty and personality and other things that made his aunt tut and shake her head. 

One day, the woman asks the knight to reveal his face, or she’ll cover hers forever. Not wanting her to do so, he takes off his helmet. _Handsome_ she calls him, _my love, you are beautiful._ And when he doesn’t believe her, she brings him to a pond and has him look into his reflection and he sees that he is beautiful after all. 

What had his aunt told her when he left the room? _Don’t fill his head with such delusions. You should read to Marius, not this other one. Leave this one to work._

Marius, his father’s pride, is a knight. A picture of beauty, with the strong jaw and nose of his father, blue-toned skin and white hair like his mother’s, and almond shaped eyes bright with the glee of his ridiculous jokes. It is not a wonder they no longer speak. 

When Luciel was taken away, he didn’t want to see the look on Marius’ face. He didn’t want him to resemble their father, who sneered, hand clenched around the coin purse like it might escape from him, He didn’t want to see his aunt’s expression of pity, on Marius’ face. He didn’t want to see the same pain in his mother’s eyes, or hear the crack in her voice when she pleaded with his father. 

But still, climbing up to look over the cart, he sees Marius. He sees him running after them, shouting for him to take his hand. Marius nearly catches up to and Luciel can almost reach, _reach,_ for him through the slats of wood, but he is grabbed back by the collar and forced to sit with his arms around his legs, curled up in a little ball. 

And his hands callous over the years with hard labor and his back still aches from sleeping on beds too hard or too soft. 

_What a marvelous visage_ the man he was brought to says. He wears robes thicker than all of Luciel’s family’s layered on top of each other. _How delightful._ But his smile is not kind, and it certainly does not reach his eyes. His eyes. _His eyes._ Luciel isn’t sure he blinks. He always watches him, watches his face when his party guests insult him, when they poke and prod the beast he dresses up in enough silk and jewels to weigh his shoulders down. 

But when the man lays a hand on him, Luciel is not weighed down. Maybe it was one of the remarks of his guests, maybe it was how the man spoke of the other slaves. But unthinkingly, he pulls at the gaudy necklace around the man’s neck and to get him away, away, away and over the balcony and Luciel watches with a sick horror as he falls and falls and falls until he hits the ground with an awful thud.

 _Run,_ the slave in the bedroom says when she found him, frozen in shock. And he runs. 

The news did not reach his mother’s home, not before he arrived. His father is long gone, his aunt asleep, Marius wants nothing to do with him ( _You are everything to her,_ he said to Luciel, _but_ _I am nothing_ ), but his mother wraps the scarf around him and kisses his hair. _Run,_ she says and he runs. 

He works on a ship in exchange for passage to Old Vailia. Picking up odd jobs there, both labor and mercenary work, gets him through many years until he travels to a coastal city in the Dyrwood where a man named Odema invites him to join a caravan going east. He tells stories to those he travels with, making friends with one of the merchants and the daughter of a hired guard. But it cannot last, for he is still a foul omen, and he loses them too and he runs again to the Gilded Vale, with a new weight on his mind. He finds an odd elf, and Aedyran like him, accosted by (or, perhaps, accosting?) some drunks outside the inn. 

_Aloth Corfiser, at your service._

_Luciel, at yours._ Luciel’s response is awkward. Short. And his throat feels unnaturally hot, even with the scarf, when he stumbles over his words, and Aloth gives him a curious glance. 

They cram into the cheapest room, hopeful to avoid any trouble. He does not ask Aloth about the accent and hushed mutterings to himself, and Aloth does not ask him why he eyes the door and window late into the night. 

They travel together, finding others to aid in Luciel’s search to fix his soul. But in the end, when Thaos Ix Arkannon lies dead, there is no fix. His companions splinter off, their own personal quandaries and quests resolved with his help. 

Aloth is the last to leave.

He holds his hands at the east gate into Caed Nua. They stand by the side of the trodden path. Aloth looks up into his eyes and offers a soft farewell. And Luciel wants to say something, _anything,_ to make him stay, but he can only hold his hands tighter.

_I have to go now, or I’ll lose track of them._

_I could come with you,_ but he cannot, and they both know it. So, he lets go. _Be safe, Corfiser,_ he says, burning to touch his cheeks and his hair and to kiss his lips. 

And then he’s gone. And Luciel’s voice feels like it's gone with him. 


End file.
